Comp 220 - Computer Organization (Spring 2015)

Slides in PowerPoint format
from "Impacts of Moore's Law: What every CS undergraduate should know about
the impacts of advancing technology." Plenary talk by Mary Jane Irwin of
Penn State University at CCSCNE-07 Conference
at RIT, Rochester, NY, April 21, 2007. Updated by yours truly, 2015.
(Slides in OpenOffice format)

Projects

The Knob and Switch (KandS) Computer

The Knob and Switch Computer is a Web-based simulator that will introduce
you to the inner workings of a CPU and memory. It is an interactive
simulation that allows you to change the computer's settings and view what
effect these have.

This simulator adds a main memory unit to the datapath to increase the storage capacity of the machine. The key features are that memory accesses require more time than register accesses, and that memory and ALU operations happen in parallel even though one of them will be ignored.

This simulator makes the K&S programmable by adding a microprogram store. The concept of microprogramming is intuitive in that the bits of each microprogram simply encode the positions of the knobs and switches.

This simulator is a complete stored program computer. It uses a control unit that translates machine language commands into the microinstructions that carry out the operation. Instructions entered in main memory locations in assembly language are automatically assembled into machine language. The assembly / machine language instructions are documented on the: Assembly/Machine Language Programming Card.